Exploratorium's Science of Baseball - The Exploratorium
Interactive (Shockwave) exhibits from San Francisco's science museum include Fastball Reaction Time (can you hit a 90-mph fastball?) and Scientific Slugger (see what makes a home run: vary the angle of the ball, bat speed, and pitch speed, then watch the distance the ball travels). Articles include "Take Me Out to the Besuboru Game," about baseball in Japan; and "Biological Baseball," which offers some facts and reflections on human reflexes, reaction time, and decision-making. Activities include: Thrown for a Curve (learn how to throw a curveball, screwball, or slider); Finding the Sweet Spot (of a baseball bat); Bouncing Balls (how high?); Handle Forces (get a grip!); and Basketball (about the bounce of the ball). "How Far Can You Hit One?" examines the influence of atmospheric conditions, particularly wind, on fly balls. Read "The Girls of Summer" tour to learn about the first professional female ballplayers. "Putting Something on the Ball" discusses the physics of pitching, especially the phenomenon of transfer of momentum. With a "time machine" on the history of the national pastime, animations, video and audio (RealMedia) clips, and a bibliography. Project participants include Louisville Slugger, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Oakland A's, the San Francisco Giants, and Total Baseball.
more>>

Harvard Sports Analysis Collective
Dedicated to the quantitative analysis of sports strategy and management, this Harvard student organization focuses on the intersection of sports, sports business, statistics, and problem solving. Original analysis and research into sports analytics authored by the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective (HSAC) and its members have included "Predicting Overtime with the Pythagorean Formula," "Dynamics of a Pitched Baseball," "The Mathematics of H-O-R-S-E," and "Up Three, Under Seven: The Most Hotly Debated Endgame Scenario." Posts on the blog, which dates back to 2009, have included "Strikeouts and the Anna Karenina Principle," "The NFL Wedge Ban's Effect on Kick Returns," and "Tony Sparano: Not One For Counting or Brilliant Mathematican?"
more>>

The Physics of Baseball - Alan Nathan
Read about the benefits (or not) of corked bats, the differences between aluminum and wood bats, the issues involved with characterizing the performance of bats from a physics point of view, and a description of the collision between a wooden bat and ball. Watch a 50-minute Windows Media Player video of Nathan's talk on the physics of baseball. With links to other sites examining the science of baseball: acoustics, sweet spots, safety, aerodynamics and pitches, dampening out vibrations in aluminum baseball bats, "juiced" baseballs, baseball technology, composite (Baum) bats, batspeed, batting and thinking, NCAA bat standards, and more.
more>>

All Sites
- 88 items
found, showing 1 to 50

82 Games - Roland Beech
In-depth statistical coverage and analysis of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The site analyzes team-wide or player-specific shot selection and shot clock usage, production by position, player pairings, foul drawing, turnovers, and clutch play
...more>>

The Aerobie® Flying Ring - Alan Adler
A scientific paper by the inventor of the Aerobie® flying ring: "The most difficult aspect of the design task is that the disc must fly over a wide range of α (angle of attack).... A conventional Frisbee disc partially accomplishes this by employing
...more>>

Authentic Inquiry Maths - Bruce Ferrington
Blog by an Australian teacher who advocates Tedious Repetitive Activities Involving Number (TRAIN) for the Genuine Application of Mathematical Experience (GAME). Posts, which date back to April, 2012, have included "Top 10 Maths Songs," "Maths and Making
...more>>

BaseballSavant.com - Daren Willman
Daily feeds of Major League Baseball (MLB) player matchups and advanced statistics on those players. See, in particular, Willman's Instant Replay Database, which analyzes umpire reviews and manager challenges of fair or foul in outfield, fan interference,
...more>>

Behind the Numbers - Jonathan Sills; ESPN SportsZone
A monthly column that explores the gray area between math and sports and what happens when exact calculations meet the human, unpredictable factors that make sports so entertaining. A combinatoric and probabilistic analysis of changes in World Cup soccer
...more>>

Bending a Soccer Ball--Mathematically - Michael Trott
With the World Cup under way, Michael Trott was asked by American Scientist magazine to help with some graphics to illustrate their feature article, "The Topology and Combinatorics of Soccer Balls," by Dieter Kotschick. Michael explains, "Using various
...more>>

ÜberFan - UberFan, LLC
"The fan's electronic baseball card," UberFan.com gives each fan ownership of Major League Baseball statistics by collecting them from the games he or she watches. Satisfy your curiosity for how many home runs you've seen your favorite batter hit, for
...more>>

Clutch Hitting - Elan Fuld
Download the PDF of a study examining whether clutch (or choke) hitters exist in professional baseball. Using play-by-play data, Fuld found substantial evidence that clutch hitters exist in Major League Baseball, when sacrifice flies are considered as
...more>>

Count On - Department for Education and Employment, UK
Activities and resources -- some simple and some fancy -- for parents, teachers, and students. Resources offers, among other things, guides: to mathematical misconceptions; for parents helping with homework; for promoters of math fairs; and for providers
...more>>

Do the Math - Slate
A topical series about math in culture, politics, psychology, and other popular themes, many written by math professor Jordan Ellenberg. Articles, which date back to June, 2001, have included "Barry Bonds and the Placebo Effect," "Algebra for Adulterers,"
...more>>

Exploratorium's Science of Cycling - The Exploratorium
Organized into seven sections. Introduction: What is the Science of Cycling? The wheel: Why do road bikes have thin tires, while mountain bikes have fat tires? Drives and gears: What is a gear ratio? And how do gears help make the bicycle so efficient?
...more>>

Exploratorium's Science of Hockey - The Exploratorium
This site takes you inside the game: you'll hear from National Hockey League players and coaches, as well as leading physicists and chemists. Divided into seven main sections: the ice (why is ice slippery?), skating (what are the mechanics involved in
...more>>

Exploratorium's Skateboard Science - The Exploratorium
Watch a webcast (RealPlayer) of professional skateboarders performing as an Exploratorium staff physicist explains the physics behind this extreme sport; also, an interview with a skateboard designer, and a Flatland Freestyle demo. "Trickscience" looks
...more>>

FanGraphs
Major and minor league baseball statistics and analysis, including graphs, splits, game logs, play logs, spray charts, plate discipline, PITCHf/x, strike zone heat maps, and more for every ballplayer and team.
...more>>

Getting Slammed in Tennis - Ivars Peterson (MathTrek)
One arena where it's possible to test the apparent relationship between psychological momentum and sequences of successes or failures is best-of-five tennis matches. The question is whether the result of the first set changes the probability of success
...more>>

HitTrackerOnline - Greg Rybarczyk
Hit Tracker "determines the true distance a home run travels by recreating the precise trajectory the ball followed during flight, and extending that trajectory all the way back to field level to allow 'measurement' of the home run." Hit Tracker's spreadsheet
...more>>

Journal of Basketball Studies - L. Dean Turcoliver
A searchable site that attempts to use well-founded mathematical and scientific tools to study basketball. Contents include an overview of established methods and a list of statistical repositories on the Web. A collection of research articles contains
...more>>

Juggling by Design - Ivars Peterson (MathTrek)
The earliest known depiction of juggling is on the wall of an Egyptian tomb nearly 4,000 years old. The painting shows a woman keeping three balls aloft. It's only in the last decade or so, however, that juggling has become the subject of serious mathematical
...more>>

March Mathness - Princeton University Press
Interviews and predictions of sports rankings experts, coaches, and mathematicians which take the power of mathematical methods of rating and ranking, and bring them to bear on the NCAA college basketball tournament. Princeton University Press invites
...more>>

Math and Soccer Video - Sharp Tack Productions
A video revealing the role played by numbers, graphs, geometry, algebra, angles, area, surveys, and chance data in the game of soccer; for example, how a goalie relies on the properties of angles to know where to stand when defending the goals, and on
...more>>

Mathematical Golf Sketches - Math Forum
This activity for studying reflections finds the direction to hit a golf ball to get it to bounce off several walls and into the cup (includes a construction of the solution). See also the introduction to this activity (from the Math Forum's 1996 Summer
...more>>

mathletics - Wayne Winston
From the author of the book by the same title, which reveals "how professional baseball, football and basketball teams use math to improve their performance" à la Moneyball, and also discusses line-up evaluations, the effectiveness of running and
...more>>

Math Movement - Tim Chartier
Blog that focuses on mathematics and the "progress or movement" that occurs in Chartier's teaching, research, writing, and performing. An Associate Professor of Mathematics at Davidson College, Chartier has trained at Le Centre du Silence mime school
...more>>